The Teddy Bear Habit

by James Lincoln Collier

  THE

  TEDDY BEAR HABIT

  THE

  TEDDY BEAR HABIT

  James Lincoln Collier

  THE TEDDY BEAR HABIT

  Copyright © 1967 by James L. Collier

  All rights reserved.

  First ebook copyright © 2013 by AudioGO.

  All rights reserved.

  978-1-62064-642-7 Trade

  978-0-7927-9775-3 Library

  Cover photo @ Lutsan Pavlo/Shutterstock.com.

  For Geoffrey

  OTHER EBOOKS BY JAMES LINCOLN COLLIER:

  Chipper

  The Corn Raid

  The Dreadful Revenge of Ernest Gallen

  The Empty Mirror

  Give Dad My Best

  It’s Murder at St. Buckets

  The Jazz Kid

  Me and Billy

  My Crooked Family

  Outside Looking In

  Planet Out of the Past

  Rich and Famous

  Rock Star

  When the Stars Begin to Fall

  Wild Boy

  The Winchesters

  The Worst of Times

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  CHAPTER ONE

  ON SATURDAY morning we waited in line out in an alley behind the theater, about two hundred kids, some older than I, some younger, but mostly twelve or thirteen, about my age. The line went along the side of the building to a little flight of cement steps that led up to the stage door. At the top of the steps stood an old man with a face the color of a speckled banana. Every few minutes he would shout, “Next, come along, boy.” The kid at the head of the line would jump as if he’d gotten jabbed. He’d run up the steps and disappear through the stage door.

  The kids at the rear end of the line, where I was, were slugging each other and horsing around and so forth, but at the end near the stage door they were nervous and quiet. All of us were wearing clean white shirts and snap-on neckties and pants with creases and shoes with shines. Most had their mothers with them, or their fathers, or maybe their aunts or something. I had my voice teacher, Mr. Smythe-Jones. My mother died a long time ago, when I was just a baby, and my father was on deadline for Smash Comics and had to stay home and draw a sequence of Amorpho Man. He wouldn’t have come anyway. He isn’t that kind of a guy. I didn’t care. Besides, Mr. Smythe-Jones always takes his voice students to these auditions.

  They were choosing kids for parts in a Broadway show. They were making a musical comedy out of Winnie the Pooh and they needed a lot of kids. It wasn’t likely that I’d get the part of Pooh or even Piglet. They would have some big stars for those parts. Besides, I wasn’t that good. I’d only been studying voice with Mr. Smythe-Jones for a year or so. Still, I figured I might have a chance for Baby Roo or at least one of Rabbits Friends and Relations.

  I admit that Winnie the Pooh sounds very square, but being in a Broadway show is cool. You get famous around your school, and you can slouch around the cafeteria with your hands in your pockets saying things like, “Ringo told this friend of mine...” or “This time Murray the K came backstage, and...” Besides, you make a pile of loot, which is great even though your father steals it from you and puts it in a savings account in a bank someplace in Alaska or Hawaii, where you can’t get it. So you can understand why this whole mass of kids were there all shaped up in their best clothes.

  Mr. Smythe-Jones chewed mint-flavored Life Savers all the time. It drove me right out of my skull. When he leaned over you the way he did, you’d get a whiff that would bring the tears to your eyes. Mr. Smythe-Jones talked like an English duke on television. He talked with his mouth closed, as if he was afraid his teeth would fall out if he opened up too wide. He had a pink skull and a fancy mustache, and he always carried an umbrella, even on beautiful days. He liked to wave it around like a sword.

  “What have you got in the bag, old chap?” I was carrying a paper bag.

  “My gym clothes,” I lied. I began to blush. "I’m going down to the Y to shoot baskets after.”

  “Here, I’ll hold it for you, old boy,” he said, flipping a candy wrapper off the sidewalk with the point of his umbrella.

  I didn’t look at him. “That’s all right, I’ll hold it,” I said.

  “You cahn’t audition holding a bag, don’t chew know.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. I felt very hot and was beginning to sweat. “I’ll put it down somewhere just before I go on.”

  He started to argue with me some more, and then he stopped. He didn’t want to make me nervous so I’d foul up. Whenever one of Mr. Smythe-Jones’ students gets into a show or on television or something he puts himself down as manager and cheats the kid out of half of his money.

  But it didn’t matter, because I was bound to get nervous anyway. It was just a question of how nervous I’d get. The line was moving along pretty quickly. I was getting down toward the little flight of cement stairs which led up to the stage door. Soon I’d walk up them, and out into the middle of a huge stage where I’d have to stand all alone and sing a song called “Without a Song,” which is a pretty stupid thing to be singing when you’re singing. Mr. Smyth-Jones had taken me to two other auditions. I knew what it would be like. Out front, lounging around on the theater seats, would be the author of the show and the man who wrote the music and the director and the producer and a half dozen other important people who would decide my fate. I’d walk out there and start singing, and about thirty seconds later my voice would crack, or I’d forget the words, or I’d just generally faint all over the place.

  That’s the way I am. That’s my problem. I’m a loser. Anyone is likely to get a little bit nervous in a situation like that, but with me it isn’t a little bit. I just fall apart. I get started off all right, usually. Then gradually I start getting nervous, and right away I begin to goof up. At first a little goof, and then a bigger one and so forth so that by the time I get down to the end the whole thing is completely ruined.

  I’ve been that way ever since I can remember. I remember once when I was a little kid we had a spelling bee. I was zipping along, shooting the answers hardly without thinking. Then all of a sudden it dawned on me that there was only one other kid left, and that I had a good chance of winning. The minute I realized that I went hot and prickly and began to sweat. Naturally on the next turn I messed up “pinecone,” which I knew exactly how to spell.

  Or just last month. I go up to the Y and shoot baskets a lot, and this time some of the bigger guys were scrimmaging and they were short one man and they let me in. As long as I sort of hung back and fed the ball to the guys on my team I was fine. Then we got a fast break going, and all of a sudden I was dribbling into the basket alone. The minute I realized what was happening I got very embarrassed, and when I went up to shoot, I flung the ball over the back board. Nobody said anything, but man was I disgusted with myself, and pretty soon I quit and went down and had a shower. To miss a shot like that isn’t a big thing. It s just an example of the way I am.

  Once, when I was a real little kid—five, or something—Pop gave me a dime and told me to go into the candy store and get whatever I wanted. I went there; but I just couldn’t get myself into the store. All I had to do was walk in, lay down the dime, and choose a candy bar, but I couldn’t do it. I was so ashamed of myself that I ran up to the park and hid between a bush and a trash basket for two hours until Pop had the cops out looking for me. I can still remember that smell of an old half-eaten peach that was in the basket; all I
have to do is see an advertisement for peach ice cream and I practically get the heaves.

  You see: I’m a loser. Nobody knows I’m a loser. You can’t tell it just by looking at me. But I know it.

  I had gotten down near the flight of cement stairs at the beginning of the line. Back behind us the kids were shouting and horsing around, but here we were quiet. All around the bottom of the steps it was knee-deep in chewing-gum wrappers. Everybody was chewing like crazy. The kid just in front of me had on a pair of cool green suede shoes, and his face was a color to match. The kid at the head of the line was sort of leaning against the iron-pipe stair railing just as casual and cool as if he were home watching television, but his smile looked as if it was sewed on his face. I was specializing in sweat and hot flashes.

  Mr. Smythe-Jones put his hand on my paper bag. “Here, old boy, I’ll take it now,” he said.

  I didn’t let go. “I got it, Mr. Smythe-Jones.”

  Suddenly the door at the top of the stairs slammed open. The man stuck out his banana-colored face and hollered, “Next boy, come along.” The kid with the sewed-on smile shot up the stairs and disappeared through the door. The rest of us moved up one. “What did you say was in the bag, old chap?”

  “I said before, my sneakers and stuff,” I said.

  “Don’t chew know, you cahn’t go on stage with sneaks, old fellow.”

  “I’ll just stick it somewhere.” A big cold ball of sweat rolled down my side like a snowball. My stomach was beginning slowly to clench and unclench. About a century before, when I had been back near the happy end of the line and hadn’t any serious troubles, I had eaten a chocolate coconut bar. Now all the coconut had swollen up like a balloon and was trying to get out my throat. I kept wondering what was going to happen when I opened my mouth to sing.

  Mr. Smythe-Jones laid his hand on the paper bag again. “Sure you wouldn’t rather I held it, old bean?”

  “It’s just my sneakers,” I said. “I don’t want to lose them. I’ll just put them down somewhere when I get inside.”

  Then the door slammed open once more. The boy with the green shoes and face straightened up as if he’d been shot full of electricity, ran up the steps, and disappeared through the door. Now I was next.

  I stood at the bottom of the little flight of steps wishing that instead of a stage door at the top, there was a gallows. Hanging would have been less painful and a whole lot quicker. I wished I was one of those fellows who had stolen the Hermes Sapphire from the museum. They were bound to get caught and go to jail, where they wouldn’t ever have to do any auditions. Of course there was the chance that the theater would catch fire in the next two minutes. Or maybe an atomic bomb would go off in Times Square, two blocks away, and I would be instantly demolished.

  I was clutching at straws and I knew it; so I clutched my paper bag tighter and waited.

  Of course there were no sneakers in it. There was no towel and no gym shorts, either. What I had in the bag was a worn-out, beat-up, patched old teddy bear with one of its glass eyes missing and the threads that made up its mouth mostly rubbed away. It was a little smaller than a football, and I had owned it all my life. Really, all of my life. Pop bought it for me the day I was born. Of course I didn’t actually get it until I came home from the hospital, but I actually owned it from the first day of my life. It was as old as I was, older, even, because it must have been made sometime before I was born.

  The truth is that I don’t own it. It owns me. The thing is, I discovered a long time ago that I wasn’t so much of a loser when I had the teddy bear around. It’s magical. For example, that time I goofed up in the spelling bee. If I’d had the teddy there where I could have gotten a look at him, I wouldn’t have goofed. I would have gotten nervous maybe, but I probably would have gotten the answer right. I don’t understand it. I just feel stronger and more confident when he’s around. I can’t explain it. He’s nothing but some cloth and a lot of old cotton batting. There shouldn’t be any magic in that. But there is. Of course, a lot of the time the teddy doesn’t do me any good. I can’t take the teddy into a basketball game with me. And I can’t smuggle him into school when I have to say a poem I’ve memorized. But, for example, I had to be one of the wise men in the Christmas pageant last year and sing a song, and all that jazz. I hid the teddy in this box of frankincense I was supposed to be carrying. I did my song perfectly; I was a big hit.

  Or there was the time when I had to go up on the stage in assembly and make a speech about how much Mrs. Creepy had done for the school, and how much we were going to miss her, and a lot of other lies that my English teacher wrote out for me. I wrapped the teddy up in some newspaper, and during rehearsal I left him on a table offstage where I could see him when I looked around. I know it’s a terrible thing for a kid as big as me to go around carrying a teddy bear. It’s a weakness, and it’s embarrassing to me all the time. I would hate for people to find out about it. But there’s nothing I can do. You know how it is with people who want to stop smoking cigarettes but can’t. They have a tobacco habit. Well, I have a teddy bear habit.

  Suddenly the stage door slammed open again and I went into a state of shock. The next thing I knew I was standing among a mess of dusty ropes and heavy electrical wires, looking out toward the stage. The kid with the green shoes was finishing his song. His face wasn’t very green anymore. He was singing good and loud, and I could tell how happy he was feeling that he’d made it to the end.

  He finished. Somewhere out front a man’s voice said, “Thank you,” which is what they say when you’ve flunked. It didn’t bother Green Shoes a bit; he was just happy to have it over with. He jumped off the stage, grinning, and went out the front of the theater, and I hated him for being so happy when I was just about to be electrocuted and drowned and beheaded and tortured to death.

  “Go on, boy,” the old man said. My legs went weak, and I stumbled over an electric line I couldn’t see in the dark. I trotted out onto the stage and looked around. There were the usual dozen people lounging around on the front rows of the theater seats. The house lights were on, and I could see how bored they were with listening to a lot of kids sing. A woman with her hair tied up behind her head and a clipboard in her hand stood up. “This is George Stable,” she announced to the men lounging on the chairs. “George is twelve years old, and he has no previous experience. All right, George.”

  I stepped forward the way Mr. Smythe-Jones had taught me and opened my mouth, hoping that music would come out, not coconut.

  “What’s with the paper bag, George?” one of the men said.

  I’d forgotten. I was still holding the teddy bear. I began to go all hot. “Oh,” I said. “I forgot. It’s just my sneakers.”

  “Well, let’s get rid of the sneakers, George,” the man said. My throat had clogged up. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t swallow, so I said nothing and walked over to the side of the stage. There was a chair there, behind the curtain just out of sight of the audience. I set the bag down on the chair, where I would be able to see it, and walked back onto the stage.

  I spread my arms out wide, the way Mr. Smythe-Jones had taught me, opened my mouth, and darned if I didn’t actually begin to sing. It was the teddy. I wasn’t singing very well, mind you, not the way I could when I was up in Mr. Smythe-Jones’ studio, listening to the radiator thump and smelling Mr. Smythe-Jones’ mint-flavored Life Savers. Still, it was going along all right. At first I wasn’t being too expressive, the way Mr. Smythe-Jones was always yammering at me to be, but I took a quick look over at the teddy, and as I got into the song I began to feel better and better. I started feeling and seeing things again. I glanced down at the men in the first row. They were really listening to me. All at once I could tell from the way they were paying attention that it wasn’t just a matter of getting through it: I had a chance for one of the parts.

  Knowing that shook me a little, the way the feeling of winning always did. To keep my confidence, I turned my head a bit to take a quick glance
at the teddy.

  The old man with the brown banana face was sitting on the chair. The paper bag with the teddy in it had disappeared. I went cold, and my voice began to fade. I looked back out front, and went on singing. My voice was getting weak and a little rusty, and I was beginning to sweat.

  Maybe the old man had put the paper bag somewhere where I could see it. I took another fast peek.

  It wasn’t anywhere in sight. My voice got weaker, and I knew right then I was going to mess it up. I started telling myself that I could do it, that the teddy didn’t matter; then I realized I had skipped a whole part of the song. I stopped.

  “Take it from the bridge, George,” somebody said.

  “I—my—,” I said.

  “Take it easy, George. Try again.”

  I nodded and swallowed and somehow I got going again. My voice sounded like somebody raking dead leaves off a gravel walk. I sang flat half the time and sharp the other half, and by the time I got down near the end of the song, I was going so fast that I got half the words wrong. It didn’t much matter. When I finished, I didn’t even wait for the man to say, “Thank you.” I just walked off the stage.

  The old man was headed out for the alley to haul in the next victim. “I put your lunch up on the shelf there, bub,” he said, pointing. “You oughtta be more careful. I almost sat down on it.”

  I grabbed the paper bag and ran.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I LIVE ON Manhattan Island, which is the most famous part of New York City. Manhattan is where Times Square is, and Radio City Music Hall, and the Empire State Building, and Wall Street, and the stage shows, and all that jazz.

  Greenwich Village, where I live, is what they call the Bohemian section of the city. A Bohemian section is where the artists hang out—painters, writers, poets, composers, and so forth. Besides the artists and writers, there are usually a lot of weirdos in a Bohemian section. In Greenwich Village we have plenty of weirdos and beatniks and dope addicts and various other kinds of nuts, like men who wear pirate scarves and beards and earrings, and women who paint their faces white and dress like little girls.